President Barack Obama has the following fun and interesting things to say about his Presidential Budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2016.

The President’s 2016 Budget is designed to bring middle class economics into the 21st Century. This Budget shows what we can do if we invest in America’s future and commit to an economy that rewards hard work, generates rising incomes, and allows everyone to share in the prosperity of a growing America. It lays out a strategy to strengthen our middle class and help America’s hard-working families get ahead in a time of relentless economic and technological change. And it makes the critical investments needed to accelerate and sustain economic growth in the long run, including in research, education, training, and infrastructure. These proposals will help working families feel more secure with paychecks that go further, help American workers upgrade their skills so they can compete for higher-paying jobs, and help create the conditions for our businesses to keep generating good new jobs for our workers to fill, while also fulfilling our most basic responsibility to keep Americans safe. We will make these investments, and end the harmful spending cuts known as sequestration*, by cutting inefficient spending and reforming our broken tax code to make sure everyone pays their fair share. We can do all this while also putting our Nation on a more sustainable fiscal path. The Budget achieves about $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, primarily from reforms to health programs, our tax code, and immigration. – The White House Website

Not much of this comes as a surprise. We are going to bring Middle Class Economics into the 21st Century. We can’t of course. The sentence literally has no meaning. Heck, the entire paragraph above has no real meaning except for the part I bolded. Barack Obama wants to get rid of the sequestration that he, himself insisted upon a few years back. It smacks of restraint and nose-to-grindstone discipline. The man has been elected twice on the basis of his promises to get these out of people’s lives and to give them candy instead. But it just may be, if President Obama really wants to trim $1.8T off of future deficits, he needs to cut out all the sweets in toto. The Great State of Maine shows how this can work.

Contrary to what you may here from liberals in The Great State of Maine, Maine still maintains a SNAP program. It’s just more of a pain in the butt to stay on it. You work a certain number of hours, enroll in job training, volunteer, or stop getting the SNAP benefit entirely. Perhaps they’ve seen the infamous Chapter video** on the subject of EBT cards. Because Governor LePage took action and got the following results. Hear the lamentation of the Leftists

According to Department of Health and Human Services data, 9,478 able-bodied adults without dependents received SNAP benefits on Dec. 1. That number dropped to 2,530 on April 1.

Simple, silly me. I read something like this and smell the smell of victory. A nation that has its workforce participation rate through the floor needs to stop carrying people who can get off their sorry butts and walk. But that’s not what the liberal sees. They see an entire economy dying here.

“Can they get there? Is the transportation an issue? Is it close by to home that they could walk? Certainly, if someone can work at something in their own town, that’s the ideal, but often times that’s not the case,” said Barb Wentworth, who works with United Way of York County. Christine Hastedt, of Maine Equal Justice Partners, said that’s not easy. “The experience I’ve had talking to a lot of nonprofits in the state are highly motivated to try to help this population is that they just don’t have the capacity to handle as many volunteers as need a placement under this new policy,” Hastedt said.

Would driving these people to work count as an act of charity? How about providing them impounded vehicles? How about organizing work details that qualify as volunteer work? I’m sure Maine is a beautiful place, but like any other place; there’s garbage to be collected.

But no. The point isn’t helping people get off these programs. The whole point of these programs is to become self-licking ice cream cones and bureaucratic empires. Taking 5,900 people off of public assistance is *bad.* It could even call into question the purpose of having the public assistance. It could exist to subsidize an ongoing demand for poverty from someone other than the poor themselves. Brett Stevens of Amerika.org describes the phenomenon.

With public welfare, all sorts of behaviors are subsidized because welfare demands nothing more than being poor. There is no accountability or activity requirement for the person involved. You subsidize criminal activity, gang activity, indolence, small amounts of low-level entrepreneurship, drug use, and alcoholism in addition to these evil dastardly big corporations.

But that isn’t the point either. Liberals tend to rely heavily upon the weight of the poor. The Piven-Cloward strategy isn’t executable without a sizeable reserve army of the unemployed. The Marxists have read their Marx. A man of the people has to have a pretty big gang of people around to work his beck and call. This requires a significant investment in logistical support. You can’t have these people too busy shuffling off to work if they’re needed to occupy Wall Street. So no, Barack Obama will not be means testing or putting work requirements on any Federal Benefits aside from Obamacare Subsidies. Personal responsibility has no role in 21st Century Middle Class Economics whatsoever.